


The Best Plan To Date

by tawg



Series: The Dangers of Dating a High School Principal [8]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Avenger Clint, Date Night, First Date, M/M, Suit Porn, backstory time, bruce is a secret master of dating, bruce is also a troll, jam balls, jarvis can't be trusted, nothing goes according to plan, pepper is scary when she means business, principal couson, puns, so many puns, tony is a proud papa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint has a plan for his first official date with Phil. Sadly, it involves his teammates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Plan To Date

Clint hadn’t intended for it to become a team thing.

Clint had planned to just ask Jarvis for advice on where swanky people took one another for dinner. Asking Jarvis was usually a good solution to that kind of problem – as well as knowing damn near everything, Jarvis saved his sass and attitude for people who deserved it. Like Tony.

Clint had forgotten, however, that Jarvis was Tony’s brainchild above all else and could not be trusted to keep secrets. So when Clint headed down to the living area and the SHIELD-issue landline to make a reservation, he shouldn’t have been surprised to see Tony leaning by the phone and smirking at him.

“What’s the word, hummingbird?” Tony asked, a knowing smugness to his voice

“Jarvis!” Clint complained. The AI stayed silent, and Clint had to make do with shaking his fist at the ceiling.

“I’ve already made you reservations for the new Thai place. It’s called Black Thai. Nothing like a good pun. They said they were booked up for the next month, but I asked nicely.” Tony ginned, all white teeth and sharp edges. “So, when do we meet him?”

Clint had his face schooled into an impassive mask. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. He folded up the printout of restaurants Jarvis had given him, and slipped it into his back pocket.

“Oh, please,” Tony said, giving Clint a dark look. “You don’t steal my mobile just for fun. Well, except for that brief period I was allowed on Twitter. But I like to think our friendship has moved beyond that.”

“Tony, honestly-”

“You,” Tony said, pointing an accusing finger at Clint, “have been up and down and all over the place. I am concerned that you’re turning into a real person instead of a SHIELD drone. I demand to meet the saucy devil who has defrosted your heart of stone.”

“You can’t defrost stone, Tony.”

“Yes you can.”

“Stone doesn’t freeze.”

“But it could get water on it and then – no, wait, that would be defrosting the water. Fine, you win this round. But we’re still meeting him.”

Clint shook his head and walked to the elevator. “Not going to happen,” he called over his shoulder. He waited until the elevator doors opened and he had stepped inside before adding, “But I might let you observe from a distance.”

“Kinky!” Tony yelled back as the elevator doors closed. 

On the bright side, Clint knew that he wouldn’t have to worry about telling anyone else that Phil was not to be swamped with superheroes. Not that Clint thought that one party would disapprove of the other – he just suspected that Natasha’s dinner party story about the time Clint had garrotted someone with his bow string, and Bruce’s _hilarious_ recount of the time Clint had gotten an allergic reaction to a jungle plant on his hands and had oozed so much pus on his bow that the quartermaster of SHIELD had incinerated a one-of-a-kind piece of equipment rather than try to clean it could be put off for a few more weeks. Or forever. They were the kind of chummy, friendly stories that would send any sane person running for the hills. But between Tony and Jarvis, the whole tower would know within a few hours that Phil was ‘hands off’ until Clint gave the word. Clint kind of liked that about hanging with the Avengers – news travelled fast.

Of course, the downside of being around the Avengers was that they tended to approach everything as a team. Even things that did not require a team effort. Things like getting Clint dressed for his date.

“So what are you going to wear?” Pepper asked that night as everyone tried to sort out their own dinner at the exact same time. There was a lot of ducking and dodging around the kitchen. Clint had perched himself on top of the fridge and was eating a sandwich.

“I dunno,” he replied. “Probably just my suit.” The way Natasha laughed and Pepper gave him a horror-stricken look let him know that was the wrong answer. “What? What’s wrong with my suit?”

“For a start, it’s SHIELD issue,” Natasha said as she slapped his leg. Clint pulled it up so she could open the fridge door.

“Nat, even my underpants are SHIELD issue.”

Natasha stared up at him for a long moment. “We really need to take you shopping.” Clint wasn’t entirely sure why that phrase struck fear into him, but he pulled both legs up to his chest and scooted back against the wall.

“Your little spy costume is a business suit,” Pepper explained as Natasha handed her a bell pepper. “You can’t go to an evening event in a business suit.”

Clint glanced at Steve and Bruce for confirmation. Steve looked baffled and Bruce just shrugged. “Having more than one pair of pants is still a novelty,” he said. “I’m happy to leave this to the expert.”

“When are you going to dinner?” Pepper asked. “We can get you something tailored.”

“Tomorrow night.”

Pepper stared up at him with the look of angry disappointment Clint had previously only seen aimed at Tony. Then she sighed, and gave him a critical look. “We’ll see if you fit into anything of Tony’s,” she said at last. “Though we’re still sending you to a tailor.”

“You know,” Clint said, preparing the cram the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and make a break for it, “I’ve just remembered that I have a _lot_ of target practice that I need to get in, so I’ll just-”

“I will hunt you down and drag you into a good suit even if you kick and scream the whole way,” Pepper said bluntly. Then she popped a slice of cucumber into her mouth and gave Clint a sweet smile.

Clint had extensive training in evasion, hand to hand combat, and exit strategy. He also knew the benefits of picking his battles. 

“Sure,” he said, not quite managing to look thrilled. “Date night suit party. Bring it on.”

The suit Clint ended up in was grey, shiny with a green tint to the way the material caught the light. Paired with a black shirt and no tie, it actually looked simultaneously sedate for something that Tony Stark would wear, and ostentatious for something that Pepper Potts would allow into Tony’s wardrobe. It made Clint look good, had been altered slightly to show the lines of his body, and coincidentally managed to bring out his eyes. (Clint suspected that it was no coincidence. Clint suspected that Pepper and Steve had gone through every single suit that Tony owned to find a colour palette that would work.) 

But Clint didn’t like it. Couldn’t like it. All of Clint’s experiences with suits involved them being a tool to make him blend in, to make him anonymous. Tony’s suit and the conspicuousness it carried made Clint’s skin itch.

He didn’t like the way it restricted his movements. He didn’t like that he was down to two knives and his comm because there was not a great deal he could conceal under the jacket and pants. He didn’t like the way heads turned and people watched him as he walked through the park to their meeting place, slightly late and fully aware that Phil was the kind of person who was always slightly early.

Then Phil caught sight of him, allowed his eyes to roam over Clint’s body and the places where the suit clung to it (the jacket fitting the line of his shoulders, the buttons doing everything to highlight the leanness of his waist). Phil met Clint’s eyes again, and Phil’s mouth was curled up slightly at one corner, something predatory and intent in his gaze.

On second thought, Clint could learn to like the suit.

They met at the South end of Central Park because Phil had commented, jokingly, that if Clint got called away on business he’d much prefer to be left standing alone in a park than be stood up in a restaurant. And Clint could definitely sympathise with that mentality – he had dated within SHIELD for a while but that had been an exercise in over-regulated futility, and after that he’d plain given up on relationships for several years – but it also drove home to him how important this one night was. If Clint could get through a date without getting called away to save the world, they could make this juggle of duties work. Clint was sure of that. 

And since his teammates had banded together so thoroughly on getting him dressed and shoving him out the door (Bruce arguing with Steve about the merits of taking flowers while also convincing with Pepper that Clint could indeed ‘work’ the suit without a tie, and simultaneously shooting down Tony’s insistence that Clint borrow a car and take Phil out in style had been a stunning sight to behold) Clint hadn’t felt too bad about asking for a little assistance in keeping his night distraction-free. 

“I see you’ve decided that limping is in,” Clint said as they started walking towards the restaurant.

“I’ve had a few too many students giving me props for my pimp cane,” Phil replied drily, and Clint was pretty sure he had hearts in his eyes from the way Phil could drop ‘props’ and ‘pimp cane’ into a sentence without sounding painfully awkward.

“Giving in to peer group pressure?” Clint clicked his tongue. “I expected more from you.”

“Well,” Phil replied, giving Clint a lingering glance. “Pressure is a word with multiple meanings, and I can’t say I’m averse to all of them.”

“You’re getting your flirt on early,” Clint said, tugging at the front of his jacket.

“You look nice,” Phil replied, as if it were the most reasonable explanation in the world. 

Clint didn’t bother trying to keep the smile off his face. “Takes one to know one,” he shot back.

Phil huffed a laugh. “I am rubber, you are glue,” he retorted, and Clint’s smile broke into a grin.

Phil had a grey overcoat draped over one arm and honestly looked a little too good to touch. He wore a three piece suit in a deep royal blue that looked charmingly conservative and snappy. It put Clint in mind of British Cold War spies. He had to stamp down the urge to press Phil against a brick wall and purr “We have ways of making you talk,” into his ear.

On the topic of ears, Clint lifted a hand and touched his left ear tentatively as he opened the outer door to the restaurant for Phil. _“Stop fiddling with it,”_ Natasha said through the in-ear speaker of his stealth comm. _“Look charming.”_

(When Pepper had suggested that Clint wear a stealth comm on his date while the Avengers stood guard to head off any trouble that came his way, she had probably assumed she was making a joke. But Tony’s eyes had lit up, and he’d cupped her face and kissed her temple. “You’re a genius,” he’d said. “That’s perfect.” 

“But I didn’t-”

“I said you were the smartest Avenger,” Clint had said with a grin as Natasha pulled up a map of the district and Steve started identifying key vantage points.

“I’m _not_ an Avenger,” Pepper protested.

“But you don’t deny that you’re the smartest,” Tony had said, turning to stand with his back to her chest and wrapping her arms around him.

“Oh, that’s never been up for debate,” Pepper had replied as she pulled one hand free and ruffled Tony’s hair. “But you can’t just commandeer the Avengers Initiative for a whole night to play chaperone.”

“We can if we don’t tell anyone,” Steve had said, sounding ridiculously serious as he tagged buildings around Black Thai as recon points and arsenal stores. “From this point on, this is a stealth operation.”

“It can’t be an operation without a snappy name,” Tony said. “Something that represents the weight and seriousness of our responsibility. The sheer importance of making sure Clint gets to get dinner with Principal Hottie, the man he won’t even let me meet.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Well,” Bruce said without looking up from his novel, “Clint is the one showing Principal Hottie a good time. ‘Operation Sugardaddy’?”

Tony stared at Bruce for a long moment with a deeply soulful expression. “I love you,” he said seriously. “You are my absolute favourite.”

“No,” Clint said, pointing a stern finger at Tony. “We are _not_ calling this ‘Operation Sugardaddy’. I forbid it.”)

 _“Operation Sugardaddy is a go,”_ Tony said over the comm as Clint and Phil stepped inside. _“Pretty Bird and Principal Hottie have reached the target.”_ Clint was never going to forgive Natasha for siding with Bruce and Tony on the codenames. 

The inner-door of the restaurant was opened for them by an official greeter and Clint cast his eyes around the room. Dark floors and walls, cream ceilings and tablecloths. No candles but pleasantly dim lighting. A blonde woman sat at the bar in a black dress, and toasted Clint with her martini. Clint nodded his acknowledgement to Natasha. 

_“He looks good in a suit,”_ Natasha commented as Phil checked his overcoat. _“Don’t reply; you don’t want him to know that you hear voices just yet.”_ Clint stared at Natasha with a very unimpressed look, and made a sharp motion with his hand – the signal for radio silence. 

“So,” Clint said when they were seated. “How did the debate go?”

“Brooklyn Prep won, but only by a few points,” Phil replied.

“Points? I… don’t actually know how debating works.”

“There are a few different systems, but for this tournament they’ve been using the boxing ten point system,” Phil explained. “The winner of a round gets ten points, and the loser gets a lower number that relates them to the winner in terms of quality.” Phil spoke briskly, and Clint could tell that Phil had given the explanation many times in the past. “We did pretty well in terms of argument, but Brooklyn Prep had better debate technique.”

Clint ran through what he remembered from middle school debating for something to ask. “What was the topic?”

“Whether school should be all-year round,” Phil replied, and Clint nodded. “We were the affirmative.”

“Did you tease the team about making them come in over summer once they were done?”

Phil smiled, a small but amused quirk of his lips. “I suspected it wouldn’t be appreciated.”

“I think that would be a hard topic to argue, really,” Clint said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s hard to sell the idea of changing a system that we already know works.”

“But then, education programs already run through the summer,” Phil countered. “Internships, summer tutoring programs, educational camps, literacy initiatives.”

“That’s a good point,” Clint replied. “They should have canned the rest of the team and just stuck you up there.”

Phil smiled again. “That would have defeated the point of student debating. But- No. How was your day?”

“Way less interesting than whatever you were about to say,” Clint returned.

“It was more school stuff,” Phil replied. “Tell me about your day.”

“I spent most of it thinking about going on a date with you and hoping that you would talk about school stuff.”

Phil made a face. “I talk about my job too much. It’s pretty much all that I talk about.”

“Not true,” Clint replied. “You also talk about your cat.” The look on Phil’s face walked the line between impassive and quietly mortified.

 _“I don’t know what you just said,”_ Natasha murmured into his ear, _“but I think you just depressed the hell out of Principal Hottie.”_ Under cover of the table, Clint pointed one hand in Natasha’s direction and flipped her off.

“It was a good day,” Clint said, trying to save the moment. “I got up early, shot some things, had a nap.” Clint left out the part where he had been victim of a drive-by makeover, Avengers-style. Natasha had gone after his eyebrows with a pair of tweezers that Clint was positive had been present during an interrogation, and Clint had plain bolted from the scene. “Just your regular, normal Saturday.”

They were saved from Clint’s fumbling attempt at small talk by a waiter delivering menus and talking them through the specials. Pepper had explained that, as the person who chose the restaurant, picking the wine was Clint’s responsibility. Phil trod all over that by asking for a glass of water. “I don’t drink alcohol,” he explained, and Clint felt a tremendous surge of relief. He ordered a Coke, mainly to enjoy the pained look on the waiter’s face as he wrote down their drinks order before leaving them to discuss their meal options.

“You should tell me about yourself,” Clint said abruptly. “I was given strict instructions on how first dates are meant to go-”

“This isn’t our first date,” Phil replied calmly.

“And I was told that talking about selves was- Wait, then when was our first date?”

“The museum,” Phil said simply.

“Really? We’re allowed to count that?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s _our_ date.”

“Huh” Clint considered this new information, and grinned. “That was a pretty awesome first date.”

Phil’s returning smile was nowhere near as wide, but it somehow conveyed the same enthusiasm. “It was.”

“So, aside from being the kind of guy who counts fighting off stuffed animals as a date, tell me something else about you.”

Phil gave Clint a considering look. In contrast to Clint’s sprawl, Phil sat neatly without looking small or prim. He leaned forwards slightly, and Clint was suddenly the complete centre of Phil’s attention. “What do you want to know?”

After a moment of consideration, Clint decided that saying “Everything,” might count as being a little overzealous, bordering on creepy. “Why did you become a principal?” he asked instead.

“It was a natural progression from teaching,” Phil replied. “I’ve always been heavily involved in the schools I teach at, and I spent so much time pushing for things to be better that it made sense to move into a directorial position.” After a pause he added, “Also, I hit a period where I couldn’t find full-time work about seven years ago. So I did my masters in education and taught some classes on the side.”

Their drinks arrived, and Clint had to face the reality that they’d been talking when they should have been contemplating the menu. That was exactly why Clint hated formal dating – if he wanted structured interactions, he’d go hang out at SHIELD. But he’d pumped Bruce for information on what Thai food tasted the best and how to pronounce it, and Phil just asked the waiter what he recommended and picked the suggestion that involved noodles. Phil seemed to have a far better handle on how to behave during a date than Clint did.

“So,” Clint asked when they were left alone, “why did you become a teacher?”

Phil considered the question, and Clint liked that Phil didn’t have a stock answer prepared. Or maybe Phil just hadn’t been asked in a long time. “I liked a lot of my teachers during school, and I saw teaching as being an important, constructive role,” he finally said. “I needed something positive to do after I left the navy.”

“Wait, you were in the navy?”

Phil nodded. “For a few years.”

“That... honestly explains a lot.” Phil’s calm under duress, the trim lines of his body, the easy acceptance that there was a lot about Clint’s life that he would just never know, the way he didn’t think that spending time with someone who shot things for a living was completely crazy. “Why did you leave?”

“Undesirable discharge,” Phil replied easily.

Clint was stunned. “Really? What for?” Phil gave him a pointed look, and stroked the toe of his shoe up Clint’s inner calf. “To be fair,” Clint replied, “for all I know you could have stolen a boat and gone on a tour of the pacific islands or something.”

“Sadly it was nothing that exciting,” Phil replied. “In retrospect, I think it was a good move. I wasn’t especially well suited to military life.”

“But I bet you looked damn cute in that uniform,” Clint returned, and Phil’s smile was warm and pleased. “Do you have any photos?” Clint asked. “Did you wear one of those little sailors’ hats?” 

“No, nothing that stylish. I was in the flight support crew.”

Clint tried to see if Phil was joking. “You worked with planes?”

“Yes.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “In the navy?”

“Yes.”

“You joined the navy to work with planes?”

“The United States Navy has a lot of planes,” Phil returned with complete seriousness. “That’s why they have all of those aircraft carriers.”

Clint wrinkled his nose as he digested this information. “I’m just not sure I trust a lot of sailors to be messing around with planes.”

Phil gave Clint a mildly amused look. “Doesn’t SHIELD have a flying aircraft carrier?”

“Look, that’s completely different,” Clint replied, waving a hand as if to brush away any hint of a comparison.

“So having a governmental security department that is staffed by neither pilots nor sailors cruising around in a flying boat is less questionable than the navy having planes?”

“Yes,” Clint said firmly. “We also have a base inside a volcano that isn’t staffed by geologists, but don’t tell anyone.”

Phil shook his head, and allowed a small smile. “It’ll be our little secret,” he assured Clint.

When the food arrived Clint was mildly surprised to learn that he’d ordered some kind of a seafood curry. He’d given Bruce specific orders not to teach him the names of any food that would give him bad breath for the rest of the date. Bruce was officially off Operation Sugardaddy. Clint reached for the chopsticks while Phil neatly set his aside and reached for more familiar cutlery.

“No good with chopsticks?” Clint asked.

“There are days when I’m not even good with a fork,” Phil returned. 

“I find that hard to believe,” Clint replied, tapping one of Phil’s feet with his own under the table. “You look like the kind of guy who’s good with his hands.”

When Phil replied he matched Clint’s quietly flirtatious tone so perfectly that it took a while for his words to filter through. “Were you followed?”

“I... What?”

“There’s a woman at the bar,” Phil said, giving Clint a warm and easy smile, though Clint noticed the way Phil had one hand out of view under the table and he wondered if Mittens had been brought along on their night out. “She’s watching us in the mirror by the entrance. She smiles at odd intervals,” Phil explained. “It made her stand out.”

Clint stared at Phil for a long moment, contemplating his options. Then he raised his watch to his mouth, pressed a button on the side and said, “’Tasha, quit laughing at me. You’ve blown your cover.”

He swivelled around in his chair and Natasha toasted the pair of them again, this time with a Tom Collins. _“I like this one,”_ she said through the comm. _“Can we keep him?”_

“Sorry,” Clint replied, turning back to Phil. “With all of the excitement of our previous dates, I may have brought some back up. Just in case things get weird and explode a little. It wasn’t my idea.”

Phil stared at Clint for a long moment with a pleasantly bemused look and then turned his attention to his food, his mouth quirking into a smile.

“You’re not mad?”

“No. It’s kind of... sweet.”

Phil Coulson, a man who named his taser, named his cat after his taser, and thought that Clint bringing a small army out on a date with him was ‘sweet’. “You’re just too good to be true,” Clint said, staring at Phil. “No one is this cool with me bringing assassins on a date.”

Phil shrugged one shoulder. “I like a guy who’s prepared,” he said. 

“Is that a cub scout kink or something?” Phil gave Clint a pained look. “Right, principal. I should probably not make jokes about kids being sexy.”

Phil nodded, though there was a sparkle in his eyes that let Clint know that he wasn’t in trouble. “That would be very considerate of you.”

“How’s your food?” Clint asked. “Good?” It had better be good. Bruce had warned Clint that Tony liked to go to restaurants where the evening cost more than Bruce’s first car. Clint had never actually owned a car, and since he rarely went anywhere or did anything that wasn’t SHIELD sponsored he had a small pile of money that was collecting dust, so cost was no great concern. But he did regret refusing Tony’s offer to put Clint on his tab.

“Very good,” Phil replied. “Yours?”

“I have no idea what I’m actually eating,” Clint admitted. “It’s good, but I don’t know if this is fish or some kind of vegetable. The last time I was in Thailand I was living off instant noodles and Oreos.” Phil nodded as he listened, though his eyes were tracking movement behind Clint. Clint turned in his seat, and saw Natasha ducking out the door of the restaurant just as Bruce stepped through it.

 _“Just a changing of the guard,”_ Tony said over the comm. _“No big deal. Green jeans was getting sick of that cafe across the street. You just keep – yow! Natasha, are you up here ye-?”_ Tony’s voice was cut off with a sharp buzz.

Clint turned back to Phil, his face schooled into a calm and impassive look. “It’s fine,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Phil asked. “Because it’s okay if you need to go.”

“It’s really fine,” Clint replied. “It is so fine that it is hardly even worth mentioning.”

“Is that why the man who just walked in has turned around and is heading back out?”

Clint stared at Phil for a moment, on high alert and paying a sudden intense attention to his surroundings. He knew that most people found it creepy, the way he switched from a mostly normal person to someone who was ready to spring into battle, but Phil just calmly returned Clint’s stare, his napkin in one hand because he was poised to leave if Clint gave the word.

“They’ll call me if they need me,” Clint finally said, forcing himself to relax. “Really. There are whole teams of people who aren’t me that deal with these things. I can take a night off.”

Phil gave Clint a knowing look. “Have you convinced yourself yet?” 

Clint made a face at Phil in response, and tucked back into his dinner. He was determined to get through a whole dinner with Phil, and if that meant he had to eat quickly and hurry things along a little, then so be it. “Tell me more about you,” Clint said.

“Isn’t it my turn to mine your hidden depths?” Phil asked.

“I’ve been assured that I have no depth. And you can just Google me, right?”

“The results are mainly pictures of your ass, and debate about whether you’re a mutant.”

“My ass is greater than the average human’s,” Clint agreed. “I can understand the suspicion. But come on, tell me one more thing about you. Tell me something bad.”

“Bad?” Phil raised his eyebrows. “You mean aside from my near-obsession with my job, the complete lack of any interests outside of said job, and my general lack of self-preservation?”

Clint pointed his chopsticks at Phil. “Also, the way you hired the dragon who held me hostage.”

“Boryn is a –”

“A worm, yeah yeah, I know. What’s your biggest personality flaw? Seriously.”

Phil took a bite of his meal and chewed it slowly, mentally considering a long list of apparent flaws. “I’m not great at picking my battles,” Phil admitted. 

“Well, that can be a good thing,” Clint said diplomatically. “Persistence and strength of will and such.”

“My last partner broke up with me because I wouldn’t let him eat toast in bed.”

That made Clint pause. “You broke up over toast?”

“It became a thing,” Phil replied with an embarrassed shrug.

“A thing,” Clint repeated.

“I made a lot of sacrifices in that relationship,” Phil elaborated. “Crumbs in the bed just pushed it too far.”

“What kind of sacrifices?” Clint asked around a mouthful of something chewy.

“I turned down a job offer in Chicago. Moved from Maine to New York. Sold my house to cover the costs of moving and our rent. Moved in with a man who thought that using plates when eating was optional.”

Clint smiled. “I like that you rank not using plates alongside selling your house in terms of importance.”

“I was cleaning the floor every second day,” Phil replied. “It drove me nuts. I wasn’t a neat freak before I moved in with him, but it got a little intense.”

“Well,” Clint said, puffing his chest out. “I can assure you that I’m a pro-plate kind of guy.”

“That’s definitely a selling point.”

“ _And_ I’ve been trained to use a coaster.”

“We’re clearly soul mates,” Phil replied, gazing deeply into Clint’s eyes, and Clint snorted a laugh. Through the window at Phil’s back, Clint saw a small crowd of people run past, herded by a thankfully non-green Bruce Banner.

“So,” Clint said, abruptly shifting his focus back to Phil. “Are you a dessert person? Because I could do dessert.” 

“Let me take care of dessert,” Phil replied.

“Is that an innuendo?” Clint asked hopefully.

“Not this time.”

Clint gave an exaggerated sigh and signalled for the bill. “It’s because of that cub scout joke, isn’t it?”

Phil rubbed his toe against Clint’s ankle. “If I don’t punish you, you won’t learn.”

“Okay, that one has got to be an innuendo,” Clint replied. “I’m just going to assume that everything you say from now on is a double entendre, okay?”

“Alright. You certainly seem comfortable with missing the point,” Phil replied drily.

“Okay, _ow_. And that was one time,” Clint protested. It was far too soon to be making jokes about their failed attempt at sex. “I can’t believe you went there.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t,” Phil countered, a sly smile on his face. Of all the places to load a double meaning...

“Can I have Natasha back?” Clint asked as he handed his credit card to the waiter. “She doesn’t hurt my pride when she laughs at me.”

“What if I promise to kiss it better?” Phil asked, a small smile at his lips.

“It’s worth a shot,” Clint replied, leaning forwards. “I mean, if you believe it’ll make it up to me.”

Phil dropped his gaze and took a moment to appreciate Clint’s anatomy. “I think I can swallow that idea.”

Clint covered his face with one hand, torn between laughter and painful arousal. “Phil, you are _killing me_ here.”

“Come on,” Phil said, standing up and holding his hand out to Clint. “Let’s go.” 

Clint grabbed Phil’s hand, and enjoyed the way their fingers entwined without any hesitation. “Yeah, we should get out of here before they throw us out.”

“You don’t want to get tossed in the street?” Phil asked innocently.

“I get tossed around too much in the line of duty,” Clint replied with an exaggerated wince. “It leaves me quite tender.”

“I’m amazed that you can still shoot straight,” Phil said in a sympathetic tone.

“No making fun of my skills. That’s my one request. I promise you that I’ve heard them all before.”

Phil glanced over at Clint. “I have a really good one about a ‘controlled release’,” he offered.

“ _No_.”

Phil led Clint up a few blocks, and back towards Central Park. Their fingers were still linked, and Clint had insisted on carrying Phil’s overcoat so he could feel gentlemanly. There were lights in the sky that they both carefully ignored, and the comm in Clint’s ear was silent. They stopped by a street vendor who sold tiny jam donuts, about the size of a ping pong ball, deep fried and covered in cinnamon sugar.

“These are just about my favourite thing,” Phil said, handing over five dollars for a brown paper bag full of them.

“So this is my competition,” Clint commented as the moved away from the cart. “A worthy adversary.”

“I thought you should know what you’re up against,” Phil replied. They stopped by the short concrete wall that bounded Central Park and leaned their backs against it. Phil took a jam ball out of the bag and carefully took a small bite, pausing to blow on the hot jam inside.

“I will make a joke about hot balls,” Clint assured Phil. “I just need to find the right one. I’m swamped with options right now and I don’t want to give you a sub-par ball joke.”

Phil looked over at Clint with a small smile that made his eyes crinkle at the corners, and then forced his expression into something resembling sombreness. “If you can’t take donuts seriously, I’m not sure we have a future together.”

“You said we were coaster soul mates!” Clint cried.

“Things have changed, Clint,” Phil said with a heavy sigh. “We’ve both grown since then.”

“Only parts of me have grown,” Clint replied. And then they stood quietly by the edge of Central park, their shoulders pressed together, snickering like teenagers.

Clint snatched a jam donut from the bag moments before a deep, rumbling boom sounded behind them, coming from the bowels of the park. He was so distracted by the noise that he popped the ball into his mouth, and promptly burned his tongue on deep fried jam. Phil, very kindly, kissed the injury better, and they stood pressed together, surrounded by the scents of hot sugar and handsome cologne, kissing deeply and sweetly and easily. It was making out like it should be, and Clint whined in complaint when Phil pulled away.

“Are you sure you don’t need to go and see to that?”

“It’s fine,” Clint replied, still standing close, brushing his nose against Phil’s. “If they needed me, they’d call me.” He dipped his head slightly, and indulged in a sweet kiss that slowly deepened, that heated up when Phil sucked on Clint’s lower lip, and bit it gently. Clint grunted his approval, put a hand on Phil’s hip and pulled him closer still, their bodies pressed together and as far as Clint was concerned there were too many layers of clothing separating them. He was going to peel Phil out of that appetising suit, layer by sweet and promising layer, the second they got a moment alone.

And the Bruce’s voice came over the comm.

_“-me..? –Fritz and it... –Stabilizing as fast as I... –Clint, can you hear..?”_

Clint pulled back from Phil with a heavy sigh. “So, apparently I need to go and see to that.” Natasha sprinted past at that moment and dropped a black case, skidding it over towards Clint. “It’s probably nothing,” he said as she vaulted over the wall and disappeared into the park.

Phil loosened his grip on the Clint’s jacket and smoothed the rumpled lapel down, though he stared at Clint’s mouth as he did it, and the look on Phil’s face let Clint know that Phil wasn’t thrilled about the interruption either.

“Thank you,” Phil said at last. He placed a hand on Clint’s neck, ran his thumb along the line of Clint’s jaw and the motion made Clint shiver. “It’s been a wonderful evening,” he added quietly. The moment was either accentuated or ruined by Iron Man roaring overhead, and Captain America sprinting by. Phil leaned forwards and pressed a playful kiss to Clint’s cheek. “Have fun, sweetie.”

Clint held Phil close and stole another small, brief kiss, then he shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to Phil, scooped up his case with one hand, and ran into battle.

“Good date?” Tony asked from behind his armour as he grabbed Clint by the arm and lifted him to a good vantage point.

“Yeah, actually,” Clint replied. “Almost perfect.”

Tony gave him a red and gold thumbs up. “Go team,” he replied, and then they got down to business.


End file.
